Tirupati shivering with viral fevers

Tirupati: The whole district is under the blanket of fevers with several families shivering. Almost for the past one month, the prevalence of viral fevers has reached alarming proportions amid the fears of the spread of H3N2 virus though no cases of the virus have been reported in the district so far.

While the people were suffering with fevers at least for three days, they could not get any relief from the associated cough for a minimum of two weeks causing severe inconvenience to attend the daily chores.

Further, it has been laying additional financial burden on the families with the lab tests, medicines and consultation fee etc., as one after another in the family are falling sick. Almost all the PHCs, government and private hospitals have been witnessing a higher number of fever cases in recent days.

A doctor opined that the viral epidemic is on the rise and the number of fever cases have increased by at least four to five times now though there were no complicated cases so far.

Dr Chaitanya, medical officer at Gollapalli PHC of Puttur mandal, told Hans India that though there is flu virus prevalent all cases are not of flu. Patients were seen suffering from upper respiratory infections with fevers which subsided in about three days.

They were facing difficulty with throat congestion and sore throat but not severely affecting them.

District Medical and Health Officer Dr U Sreehari said that fever survey has been taken up intensively and completed covering 90 percent of the populace.

Symptomatic cases are being referred to YSR village clinics. If necessary rapid tests are being conducted and if anyone gets positive, the sample will be sent to RTPCR.

The kits relating to H3N2 virus will be provided by the government soon and for now, symptomatic cases are being referred to SVIMS which has the facilities.

So far, no positive case was reported for Covid or H3N2. During the fever survey 139 symptomatic cases were identified but all of them got negative in rapid tests. So far, only viral flu management was being done. A district-level meeting will soon be held under the leadership of the District Collector to take all preventive steps regarding sanitation.

Regarding the medicines availability, he said that a review will be taken up with drug inspectors about the supplies of Antiviral drugs.